I've seen the DVC30 in real life yesterday and it looked like a fairly solid piece of equipment (I hope the magnesium case will make it more rugged than most prosumer camcorders).

Does anybody know what the 16:9 mode(s) is (are) on this camcorder?

Looking at the Pansonic brochure it appears that there is some sort of anamorphic squeeze going on whereby the LCD picture is squished but I'm hoping the playback is normal 16:9.

Good 16:9 recording in a wide aspect as opposed to cropping a 4:3 image (at the risk of some vertical smearing if not careful) is one reason that I may favour the Sony PDX10 (slightly more expensive but comes with a mic and XLR adapter box I believe so the total cost would be similar if I buy those accessories for the DVC30).